An important use of hydrazine is as a rocket fuel. It is also used industrially to remove chromates from waste water which may be present from operations involving metal plating, chemical pigments, leather tanning or textiles. Hydrazine can be used to reduce heavy metal ions in order to (i) make them insoluble so as to recover them from waste streams, and (ii) to assist electroless plating operations. One of its earliest uses was the reduction of ferric oxide in boilers but it is now known to reduce many metal ions to lower valence states or even to the metals themselves.
As is already apparent, hydrazine is a very reactive material. It undergoes reactions with many compounds, in many instances yielding products which themselves are explosive, hence which are not promising as a possible neutralizing mechanism.
Included in the known reactions, transition metal oxides (TMO's), e.g. first row (of the Periodic Table) TMO's are known to be easily reduced by hydrazine with the resulting formation of safe, non-toxic products, see W. J. Ward et al, Ammonia Plant Society, Vol. 21, 57 (1979); L. F. Audrieth et al, "The Chemistry of Hydrazine", pp. 138-139, 148-152, John Wiley, New York (1951); A. J. Clark et al, J. Inorg. Nucl. Chem., Vol. 29, 836-838 (1967); M. W. Rophael, Surf. Technology, Vol. 16, 235-42 (1982) (Eng.) abstracted in Chemical Abstracts, Vol. 97, 134199 h (1982).
In Japanese Kokai No. 7895849 to Toshio Aibe, (Takeda Chemical Industries, Ltd.) Aug. 22, 1978, Appl. 77/11272, Feb. 3, 1977, abstracted in Chemical Abstracts, Vol. 90, 12909 (1979), a catalyst is disclosed for decomposing N.sub.2 H.sub.4 consisting of sulfates or halides of metals including Cr, Mn, Cu, etc. and a support such as bentonite.
Photoemission studies also indicate that hydrazine can be strongly bonded to Al, to SiO.sub.2 surfaces and to a Pt/Al.sub.2 O.sub.3 catalyst. This strong bonding can be attributed to hydrazine's Lewis basicity from the nonbonding electron pairs on the nitrogen atoms having significant affinity for acid sites, see D. W. Johnson et al, Journal of Electron Spectroscopy and Related Phenomena, Vol. 19, 185-196 (1980); M. Szwarc, Proceedings of the Royal Society (London), Vol. A 198, 267-284 (1949); J. P. Contour et al, Journal of Catalysis, Vol. 24, 434-445 (1972).
However, it is not predictable--owing to the complexity of the problem as discussed in detail hereinafter--which treatments or reactions proceed in such manner, or can readily be controlled, as to accomplish the aforesaid object of achieving a safe, innocuous neutralization mechanism. The prior art has not disclosed the present scheme for accomplishing this.